Ronald C. White, Jr. is the author of A. Lincoln: A Biography (2009), a New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times bestseller. The book was honored as a best book of 2009 by the Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, History Book Club, and Barnes & Noble. His Lincoln biography won the coveted Christopher Award in 2010 which salutes books “that affirm the highest values of the human spirit.”

He is presently writing a comprehensive biography of Ulysses S. Grant — American Ulysses — which will be published in 2016 by Random House.

He has lectured at the White House and been interviewed on the PBS News Hour. Dr. White is a graduate of UCLA, Princeton Theological Seminary, with a Ph.D. in Religion and History from Princeton University. He has studied at Lincoln Theological College in England. He has been honored with a D. H. L. [Doctor of Humane Letters] from Whitworth University. He has taught at UCLA, Princeton Theological Seminary, Whitworth University, Colorado College, Rider University, and San Francisco Theological Seminary. He is a Fellow at the Huntington Library, Visiting Professor of History at UCLA, and a Senior Fellow of The Trinity Forum. He lives with his wife, Cynthia, in La Cañada, California.

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The Wall Street Journal recently published a composite review of
several Lincoln books, which was entitled "Abe as He Really Was". One of the reviews was of "A. Lincoln." You can read the
full text of the review here on
the WSJ website. Here's an excerpt from that review:

"A. Lincoln" (Random House, 796 pages, $35), by
Ronald C. White Jr., is the first comprehensive, single-volume
biography of Lincoln since David Herbert Donald's in 1996. Taking
advantage of newly available resources, such as the recent publication
of the voluminous Lincoln Legal Papers, Mr. White delivers a strong
narrative that moves neatly from Lincoln's boyhood in Kentucky and
legal career in Illinois to his rise within the Whig Party, his defeat
in the 1858 Senate race to Stephen A. Douglas and his election, in
1860, as the first presidential standard-bearer for the new Republican
Party and, as it turned out, the country's leader in a time of war.

Mr. White aims at the general reader, not the specialist, and pauses
helpfully to define terms ("doughfaces," for instance, are Northerners
with Southern sympathies). As Mr. White notes, Lincoln could not have
been more unlike most of today's lawyer-politicians, few of whom have
spent much time trying cases. He was a grizzled trial veteran who
handled contested wills, railroad tax tangles and even murder cases.
The experience taught him, Mr. White argues, an appreciation for the
other fellow's point of view. Until the Civil War, Lincoln subscribed
to Southern newspapers, and he kept reading them in the White House
whenever they became available. He refused to lay the blame for slavery
exclusively at the feet of Southerners, saying that Northerners would
feel the same about the practice if the two populations changed places.

For Lincoln, facts and argument were the keys to winning people over
to his point of view. Wary of extemporaneous speaking, he "mastered his
brief" instead, assembling his speeches ahead of time and taking care
with his choice of words. His first great speech was his address at
Peoria, Ill., in 1854 attacking Stephen A. Douglas and the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed slavery to take hold again in the
territories. He wrote the speech himself after doing the considerable
investigation into the provisions the act. Unlike most public men
today, he had no "researchers" to do his work form him.

Facts might win men's minds; their hearts were another matter. Here
Mr. White argues against the common policy of pigeonholing Lincoln as
merely an Enlightenment deist. Lincoln's "Meditation on the Divine
Will," a memorandum written after the carnage of the summer of 1862 and
discovered only after Lincoln's death, shows a man grappling to find
divine purpose in the war's violence. Somewhere between the lawyer's
brief of the First Inaugural Address and the soaring biblical cadences
of the Second, Lincoln discovered that a blend of reason and faith was
more likely to persuade his listeners than reason alone.

To read the full text of the WSJ review, click here. You can read more reviews of A. Lincoln here.

The Washington Post recently published David W. Blight's review of
A. Lincoln, entitled "Abe the Intellectual", which you can read (here) on
the Post website. Here's an excerpt from that review:

The famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass once declared: "It is
impossible for . . . anybody . . . to say anything new about Abraham
Lincoln." And that was in 1893! More than 100 years later, as we
contemplate the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth on Feb. 12, an
avalanche of new books about the 16th president descends upon an eager
reading audience. Why? Ronald C. White Jr., an astute scholar of
Lincoln's religion and language, has an apt answer: Lincoln continues
to fascinate us "because he eludes simple definitions and final
judgments."

In A. Lincoln -- the title is taken from the way Lincoln
signed his name -- White does not portray a genius who seemed to figure
out all things before other mortals. Rather, this is a Lincoln of
self-doubt, an evolving personality and an emerging and curious mind.
This is a Lincoln of growth from backwoods ignorance to Enlightenment
thinker, from prejudice and caution to boldness and imagination. This
is a Lincoln, White writes, on a "journey of self-discovery" to the
very end of his life. As Douglass poignantly said, Lincoln "began by
playing Pharaoh [but] ended by playing Moses." Now that is a story.

White, a visiting professor at UCLA, has written two previous books on
Lincoln's rhetoric. The signature feature of this full biography is
White's treatment of Lincoln as reader, writer and orator, a terrain
where new insights are still available. Abraham Lincoln loved books, an
old trope in the Lincoln myth, but it is so very true. Among my
favorite images in this work is that of Lincoln, the young congressman
in 1847 in Washington, D.C. He did not drink, chew tobacco or gamble
away hours at his boarding house across the street from the Capitol.
Instead, he was observed walking out of the Library of Congress,
carrying books wrapped in a scarf tied on a pole over his shoulder. His
colleagues accused him of incessantly "mousing" around in the stacks.

And this is White's core argument: Lincoln didn't just enjoy books, he craved them -- from Blackstone's Commentaries
to Shakespeare, from many kinds of history to regular reading of the
Bible (often aloud), political philosophy and the poetry of Robert
Burns. The boy who first started reading in Sinking Creek, Ky., when he
was 5 and then yearned to escape his father's Indiana farm as a
teenager later said that in his youth "there was absolutely nothing to
excite ambition for education." White makes this "interior world of
intellectual curiosity" the central theme of Lincoln's life. Given all
the discussion of the legacy of the outgoing George W. Bush (not a
curious reader) and the ambitions of the incoming Barack Obama (a
well-read man), White's observation that it was in reading that Lincoln
could "clarify" his evolving "ethical identity" is worth our
contemplation.

The book's other signature is White's treatment of Lincoln's use of
private notes, often mere "scraps of paper" on which he constantly
tried out ideas and phrasing, especially when preparing for a major
speech. In these accumulated notes (sometimes whole pages of prose),
White concludes, Lincoln kept his own kind of "journal." And these
musings were never so important as when he wrote orations such as his
"House Divided" or "Cooper Union" speeches, or the transcendent
Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural (which White beautifully
illuminates). White sees the origins of many famous speeches in earlier
jottings, a window into how Lincoln "thinks his way into a problem."

...How daunting it must be for any biographer to take on Lincoln's life
in this crowded literary marketplace! But this thoroughly researched
book belongs on the A-list of major biographies of the tall Illinoisan;
it's a worthy companion for all who admire Lincoln's prose and his
ability to see into, and explain, America's greatest crisis.

"If you read one book about Lincoln, make it A. Lincoln".So begins USA Today's highly favorable review of my latest book, A. Lincoln: A Biography, which they published (here) as part of a piece called "Literature Hails Lincoln on his bicentennial". Here's the complete text of the review:

If you read one book about Lincoln, make it A. Lincoln. This
comprehensive, well-written biography starts with Lincoln's birth and
ends with his assassination in 1865. White is particularly strong in
his ability to convey how Lincoln's thinking on politics, race and
religion evolved. Although an admirer of his subject, White makes it
clear he is writing about a man, not a deity. He also cogently explains
the 19th century to 21st-century readers. Back then, politics were a
form of popular entertainment, the equivalent of our professional
sporting events. White presents the 16th president as a shrewd
politician who mastered new forms of communication, from writing to
newspapers to influence public opinion, to using the telegraph to
communicate with his generals.

Linked by a Bible:

Barack Obama's use of Abraham Lincoln's Bible serves to connect the presidents by religion.

By Ronald C. White Jr.
January 17, 2009

Barack
Obama's decision to select the same Bible for his inauguration that
Abraham Lincoln used at his first inauguration in 1861 forges an
intriguing connection between these two presidents. It's the latest in
a series of purposeful associations, from Obama announcing his run for
the White House from the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield,
Ill., (where Lincoln gave his "House Divided" speech), to a photo-op
last week at the Lincoln Memorial.

As with all symbols, the
use of the Lincoln Bible -- gilt-edged, covered in burgundy-colored
velvet -- does much more than physically link two administrations.
Lincoln made surprising and controversial use of the Bible and faith as
president. Will Obama, whose religious beliefs have already played a
role in American politics, do the same?

Lincoln's reliance on the Bible is surprising in
a way not generally known to most Americans today. Lincoln was the only
president who never joined a church. Yet Lincoln arguably wrote and
spoke more profoundly on faith and religion in American politics than
any other president in our history.

The range of his words
includes his emotional farewell address at Springfield in 1861, in
which he offered a compelling statement on the omnipresence of God; the
Gettysburg Address, where on the spot he inserted the phrase "under
God" in his written text; and his second inaugural address, where, in
only 701 words, Lincoln quoted the Bible four times, named God 14 times
and invoked prayer three times.

With the way religion is
commonly cited by all of our recent presidents, I was startled to
discover that, until Lincoln, only one other president -- John Quincy
Adams -- quoted the Bible in his inaugural address. God, the Almighty
or the Supreme Deity made an appearance in the first 18 inaugural
addresses, but mostly in a "God bless America" sort of way. That was
true even in Lincoln's first inaugural.

By his second inaugural, however, Lincoln's
biblical references -- two from the Old Testament and two from the New
Testament -- occur in the central paragraph, not as decoration but as
the speech's integral foundation. In quoting "Let us judge not, that we
be not judged," Lincoln uses Jesus' words from the Sermon on the Mount
(Matthew 7:5) as the pivot that turns his address in the direction of
reconciliation: "With malice toward none, with charity for all."

Lincoln's
employment of the Bible was controversial in his day for many of the
same reasons the employment of the Bible in public speech can be
contentious in ours. After the second inaugural, Lincoln was accused of
crossing the line between church and state. The New York World indicted
Lincoln for "abandoning all pretense of statesmanship" by taking
"refuge in piety."

So far, Obama's soaring oratory has been
associated more with the Bible-quoting Martin Luther King Jr. than the
Bible itself. But Obama has made no secret of his religious leanings.
And, like Lincoln, he has been criticized for it -- from his choice of
a Chicago church to his invitation to evangelical pastor Rick Warren to
deliver the inaugural invocation.

Both Lincoln and Obama are also on record as being sensitive to the misuse of the Bible.

In
Illinois, Lincoln was deeply troubled by those who tried to use the
Bible to support slavery. In Washington, he grew weary of Union
ministers and politicians who came regularly to the White House to tell
him that God was on their side. In his second inaugural, he upbraided
those who would turn God into a narrow tribal deity who takes sides
("each invokes his aid against the other") rather than a universal,
inscrutable God ("the Almighty has his own purposes").

Obama,
though critical of what he sees as misuses of the Bible by
conservatives, also has questioned the failure of liberals to join the
conversation about values that, he contends, cannot be separated from
religious values. "To say that men and women should not inject their
'personal morality' into public-policy debates is a practical
absurdity," he wrote in "The Audacity of Hope." "Our law is by
definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the
Judeo-Christian tradition."

Multiple witnesses
mention the private Lincoln reading from his well-worn Bible. He
memorized whole sections, especially the Psalms. In the summer of 1864,
Lincoln invited Joshua Speed, his best friend, to spend an evening at
the Soldiers' Home, the Lincolns' summer residence. When Speed arrived,
he found Lincoln reading the Bible.

Speed remarked: "I am glad to see you profitably engaged."

"Yes," said Lincoln, "I am profitably engaged."

"Well," Speed continued, "if you have recovered from your skepticism, I am sorry to say that I have not."

Then,
according to Speed's account, Lincoln rose, placed his hand on Speed's
shoulder and said: "You are wrong, Speed. Take all of this book upon
reason that you can and the balance on faith, and you will live and die
a happier and better man."

As for Obama, on the campaign
trail he too referenced the Sermon on the Mount. While Lincoln refers
to God as the "Living God," Obama identifies the Bible as the "Living
Word." Transparent in his own wrestling with religious questions, he
is, as was Lincoln, appreciative of differing points of view. Both men
in various ways reveal a strong internal religious compass. Both, it
would seem, "read the same Bible."

On Tuesday,
President-elect Barack Obama will put his hand on the same Bible as his
19th century model. The question now is how Obama's private and public
use of the Bible will help guide the moral outcomes he hopes will grow
from the theme of his inauguration, which yet again echoes Father
Abraham: "A new birth of freedom."

Ronald C. White Jr., a
Huntington Library fellow and a visiting professor at UCLA, is the
author of the just-published "A. Lincoln: A Biography."

Abraham Lincoln was less qualified to assume the presidency than any
of his 15 predecessors. A self-educated lawyer with only two years in
Congress under his belt, he had no executive, diplomatic or military
experience (aside from a few uneventful months in the Illinois state
militia). Even so, he successfully led the nation through its worst
crisis, a ghastly civil war that makes today's red state-blue state
divide look like a game of paintball.

In this comprehensive yet
accessible biography, Ronald C. White Jr. shows how Lincoln's moral and
intellectual development equipped him with the tools he needed for
greatness.

White's title refers to the nondescript
way the president signed his name. A deeper meaning emerges, however,
if the initial is treated as the indefinite article. Moving targets are
hard to hit, so Lincoln kept his rivals and enemies guessing about his
true nature. To them he was unremarkable, a homely hayseed who could be
swayed and manipulated. But he wasn't merely a
Lincoln; like Whitman, he contained multitudes. He was fiercely
ambitious and cunning. Had he lived in ancient Rome, he would have been
a match for Caesar.

Certainly his speeches were as good as
anything Cicero delivered in the forum. Several presidents have used
memorable language to shape public opinion, but no one else redefined
the United States through the power of his words. Some of the most
illuminating parts of White's book, in fact, are his adroit appraisals
of Lincoln's rhetorical gems: the ''House Divided'' speech, the Cooper
Union Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address,
and his second inaugural address, which White considers his masterpiece
for its rejection of vindictiveness (''with malice toward none, with
charity for all'') and its noble call "to bind up the nation's
wounds.'"

White himself is no slouch when it comes to writing. He
is that rarity: a scholar who can tell a good story. His style is
informative and unobtrusive; he expertly processes roomfuls of research
into a vivid and readable narrative. The section on the Lincoln-Douglas
debates should be singled out for praise; it is fast-paced, almost
thrilling and eerily resonant....

A. LINCOLNRonald C. White Jr. Random, $35 (816p) ISBN 9781400064991
In this excellent biography, veteran historian White emphasizes that
Lincoln was our most likable major president, lacking Washington’s
aloofness and the deviousness of FDR and Jefferson. Many young men from
the frontier overcame the handicaps of poverty and minimal education,
but, White says, Lincoln did better than most, becoming floor leader in
the Illinois legislature by age 30 and a prosperous lawyer. Contrary to
the common view that Lincoln was a dark-horse for the 1860 presidential
nomination after a single, undistinguished term in the House of
Representatives. White stresses that Lincoln was an experienced
politician, popular throughout Illinois, and known to national leaders.
Few Republicans thought they had chosen badly. The author makes good
use of Lincoln’s voluminous private papers and those of his
contemporaries to paint a vivid picture of Lincoln’s thoughts as he
matured and then guided the nation through the four worst years of its
existence. White knows his subject cold and writes lucid prose, so
readers choosing this as their Lincoln bicentennial reading will not go
wrong. Illus., maps. Photos. (Jan.)

Huntington Library fellow White (The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words, 2005, etc.) offers a lively, comprehensive life of the 16th president.

Known variously throughout his career
as “Honest Abe,” “Old Abe,” “the Rail-Splitter,” “the original
gorilla,” “the dictator,” “the Great Emancipator” and “Father Abraham,”
Lincoln referred to himself in famously self-deprecating terms and
signed his name simply as “A. Lincoln.” That’s all that was simple,
though, about this unusually “shut-mouthed” man, who from youth burned
for public distinction. White’s highly readable, picturesque
presentation follows Lincoln’s life from the pioneer birth and boyhood
to the presidential assassination, with especially good passages on
Lincoln’s ancestry, his Springfield law practice and his emergence from
the political wilderness in 1858. White doesn’t shy away from Lincoln’s
shortcomings—his ferocious ambition, his opportunism, his woeful
performance as a husband—but this mostly admiring treatment highlights
his virtues, not least his ability to draw on the talents of diverse
personalities, use the best of their advice and deftly manipulate them
to advantage, whether as a militia captain, a state legislator, a party
organizer a candidate or a president. White’s triumph, though, is his
focus on the forging of Lincoln’s moral character—how the private man
used contemplation, reading, experience, the press of events and the
teachings of his political heroes to clarify his own political
identity. Splendidly, and unsurprisingly given his past scholarship,
White pays particular attention to language, referencing the
innumerable scraps of paper Lincoln wrote to himself, public and
private letters and formal addresses. He graphically depicts Lincoln
thinking, first tentatively, and then logically working through the
thicket of a problem to a lawyerly understanding and, finally, with his
singular combination of “homely and high language,” to an exquisite
expression of meaning and purpose.

Likely to be frequently cited during the bicentennial celebration of Lincoln’s birth.

A. Lincoln: A Biography will be published by Random House January 13, 2009 and is available for pre-order now from: Amazon.com, Random House, Borders, Powell's, Barnes and Noble, and bookstores near you. A National Book Tour will begin in Miami on January 13, 2009 and include visits to Nashville, Portland, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Diego, Oxford and Jackson MS, Austin and Houston. Please click (here) for a complete list of speaking and book signing events through February 2009.

Here's what some of America's foremost historians are saying about A. Lincoln:

"Ronald C. White's A. Lincoln is the best biography of Lincoln since David Donald's Lincoln
(1995). In many respects it is better than Donald's biography, because
it has incorporated the scholarship of the past fourteen years and is
written in a fluent style that will appeal to a large range of general
readers as well as Lincoln aficionados. The special strengths of A. Lincoln
that lift it above other biographies include a brilliant analysis of
Lincoln's principal speeches and writings, which were an important
weapon in his political leadership and statesmanship, and on which Ron
White is the foremost expert, having written two major books on
Lincoln's speeches and writings. Another strength is White's analysis
of Lincoln's evolving religious convictions, which shaped the core of
his effective leadership, his moral integrity. White's discussion of
Lincoln's changing attitudes and policies with respect to slavery and
race is also a key aspect of this biography. Amid all the books on
Lincoln that will be published during the coming year, this one will
stand out as one of the best."--James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom and This Mighty Scourge

"A beautifully written, deeply personal story of Lincoln's life and
service to his country. Ron White's moving account is particularly
strong in its analyses of Lincoln's rhetoric and the process by which
the President reached decisions."

"Each
generation requires—and seems to inspire—its own masterful one-volume
Lincoln biography, and scholar Ronald C. White has crowned the
bicentennial year with an instant classic for the 21st century. Wise,
scholarly, even-handed, and elegant, the book at once informs and
inspires, with a rewarding new emphasis on the complex meaning and
timeless importance of Lincoln’s great words. Brimming with new
anecdotes and informed interpretations, White’s superb study brings
vivid new life to an American immortal."

“Manuscript Complete!” These were the words of my editor, David Ebershoff of Random House, received by a grateful author on August 18. A Lincoln: A Biography will be published on January 13, 2009, and is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com.

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